Intravenous (I.V.) additive programs are administered in many hospitals as one method for introducing medications into a patient. In prescribing such a treatment program, a doctor may prescribe any one of the number of drugs or vitamins which are to be added to an I.V. bottle and administered intravenously to his patient. The amount of the drug must also be prescribed by the doctor to adjust the dosage of medicine added to the intravenous solution to each particular patient. In addition, I.V. additive programs may include a combination of I.V. additive solutions in a "piggyback" arrangement of containers for certain specialized treatment through a combination of drugs.
In a hospital's I.V. additive program, the prescribed medication is added to an I.V. bottle under sterilized conditions by inserting a needle into the "target area" rubber membrane closing the top of an I.V. solution bottle. The I.V. solution bottle has a sterile seal covering the membrane area until the medication is to be added. The I.V. container must then be resealed under sterilized conditions to prevent airborne bacteria, such as Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, from accumulating on the exposed upper surface of the I.V. container top. In addition, resealing the container alerts the hospital staff that the contents have been altered by the pharmacy. The hospital's nursing staff will not administer the I.V. solution unless they mix the contents, or there is some means to alert the nursing staff that the contents have not been altered since prepared by the pharmacy.
The prior practice has been to utilize a plastic cap for resealing the I.V. containers. The plastic caps snap over the top of the metal rim surrounding the rubber membrane to completely seal the top of the solution bottle. In an effort to hold down hospital costs and reduce expensive inventory space, the current practice at most hospitals is to attempt to maintain only one size of plastic cap in inventory. Since the I.V. solution and piggy back containers manufactured by different manufacturers have tops which are not of uniform diameter, the plastic caps do not always provide the necessary sterilized seal in resealing the I.V. container. Further, because of the tight fit required between the plastic cap and the metal rim, the nursing staff often remove the caps by using expensive surgical instruments or scissors which can be damaged. It is standard practice at some hospitals to adminster pliers to remove the caps. The problem of removing the plastic caps results in the inefficient use of the time of skilled personnel, such as registered nurses, attempting to remove such container closures. More importantly, the present prior art closures and method for resealing I.V. solution bottles would not allow a nurse inspecting a container without a sealing cover to know where it was removed or if it was previously resealed. In such a situation, rather than risk exposing the patient to a serious infection from harmful bacteria which may have accumulated on top of such a container, the nurse must often reject this container, which results in wasting the medication as well as wasting time in reordering another I.V. additive solution from the pharmacy.